The largest lender of the country, State Bank of India (SBI) wants to make full use of its vast technological platform. The platform needed Rs 500 to 600 crore in order to get built and the bank now intends to make apt use of it.

SBI aims to shift 40% of its transactions through alternate channels by end of this financial year.

The bank intends to use its IT platform and go for an integrated payment mechanism. This project is a part of the IT integration plan of the bank which it aims to get integrated by the end of this fiscal.

With its implementation, SBI will gain world no.1 stature to have this facility. The main objective behind this plan is to align the existing payment and IT architecture in a way that the system becomes more scalable and more channel friendly payment system can be achieved.

For beginners, the architecture would act as back office support for different modes of payment like ATM, mobile (phone) banking and even branch banking.

Krishna Kumar, deputy managing director & head, IT (State Bank of India), said, "Technical assessment is under process for the proposed integrated hub and soon we would go for request for proposal (RFP) for the same".

"We want to free the branch space and branch time of the bank through the proposed hub. It will further help us use the staff working at the branches for space marketing," said Kumar.